A 25,000-year record of climate-induced changes in lowland vegetation of eastern equatorial Africa revealed by the stable carbon-isotopic composition of fossil plant leaf waxes

Damsté, Jaap S. Sinninghe; Verschuren, Dirk; Ossebaar, Jort; Blokker, Jord; Houten, Rianne van; Meer, Marcel T. J. van der; Plessen, Birgit; Schouten, Stefan

doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2010.12.025

Cited by 137 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…2c) likely reflects decreasing abundances of C4 vegetation (Sinninghe Damsté et al, 2011), rather than increasing p CO2 . Increasing p CO2 tends to destabilise C4 plants (Ehleringer et al, 1997), so an abrupt decrease in C4 abundance during the Pleistocene-Holocene rise in p CO2 logically explains the observations.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2a; van der Sleen et al, 2015), sediment organic matter (SOM) from three representative studies of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition (Fig. 2b,c;Hatté et al, 1998;Sinninghe Damsté et al, 2011;Barker et al, 2013), and herbivore collagen and tooth enamel for especially low-p CO2 (<250 ppmv) and high-p CO2 (>500 ppmv) periods of the geologic past ( Fig. 3; Supplementary Information).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Carbon isotope discrimination in C3 land plants is independent of natural variations in pCO2

Kohn¹

2016

Geochem. Persp. Let.

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doi: 10.7185/geochemlet.1604The d 13 C of terrestrial C3 plant tissues and soil organic matter is important for understanding the carbon cycle, inferring past climatic and ecological conditions, and predicting responses of vegetation to future climate change. Plant d 13 C depends on the d 13 C of atmospheric CO 2 and mean annual precipitation (MAP), but an unresolved decades-long debate centres on whether terrestrial C3 plant d 13 C responds to p CO2 . In this study, the p CO2 -dependence of C3 land plant d 13 C was tested using isotopic records from low-and high-p CO2 times spanning historical through Eocene data. Historical data do not resolve a clear p CO2 -effect (-1.2 ± 1.0 to 0.6 ± 1.0 ‰/100 ppmv). Organic carbon records across the Pleistocene-Holocene transition are too affected by changes in MAP, carbon sources, and potential differential degradation to quantify p CO2 -effects directly, but limits of ≤1.0 ‰/100 ppmv or ~0 ‰/100 ppmv are permissible. Fossil collagen and tooth enamel data constrain p CO2 -effects most tightly to -0.03 ± 0.13 and -0.03 ± 0.24 ‰/100 ppmv between 200 and 700 ppmv. Combining all constraints yields a preferred value of 0.0 ± 0.3 ‰/100 ppmv (2 s.e.). Recent models of p CO2 -dependence imply unrealistic MAP for Cenozoic records.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Carbon isotope discrimination in C3 land plants is independent of natural variations in pCO2

Kohn¹

2016

Geochem. Persp. Let.

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“…Wooller et al [7] suggested that fire, together with low CO 2 , helped drive the retreat of forests and expansion of flammable grasslands in equatorial Africa. Damste et al [8] used diverse proxies to test for low CO 2 and fire synergies in their analysis of forest-savannah interactions in Africa. Studies of the palaeoecology of fire have also increased greatly over the past decade allowing comparisons of glacial and interglacial fire activity.…”

Section: Palaeoecology Of Tree -Grass Interactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…8 Ma) [3] and their appearance has also been controversially associated with low CO 2 [4 -6]. During the Pleistocene, tropical grasslands expanded under low CO 2 conditions of the glacials and contracted as forest expanded in the interglacials [4,7,8]. In historical times, anthropogenic increases in CO 2 following industrialization have been proposed as a factor contributing to woody plant increases in grasslands (figure 1).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Carbon dioxide and the uneasy interactions of trees and savannah grasses

Bond

Midgley

2012

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

372

335

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Savannahs are a mixture of trees and grasses often occurring as alternate states to closed forests. Savannah fires are frequent where grass productivity is high in the wet season. Fires help maintain grassy vegetation where the climate is suitable for woodlands or forests. Saplings in savannahs are particularly vulnerable to topkill of above-ground biomass. Larger trees are more fire-resistant and suffer little damage when burnt. Recruitment to large mature tree size classes depends on sapling growth rates to fire-resistant sizes and the time between fires. Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) can influence the growth rate of juvenile plants, thereby affecting tree recruitment and the conversion of open savannahs to woodlands. Trees have increased in many savannahs throughout the world, whereas some humid savannahs are being invaded by forests. CO 2 has been implicated in this woody increase but attribution to global drivers has been controversial where changes in grazing and fire have also occurred. We report on diverse tests of the magnitude of CO 2 effects on both ancient and modern ecosystems with a particular focus on African savannahs. Large increases in trees of mesic savannahs in the region cannot easily be explained by land use change but are consistent with experimental and simulation studies of CO 2 effects. Changes in arid savannahs seem less obviously linked to CO 2 effects and may be driven more by overgrazing. Large-scale shifts in the tree -grass balance in the past and the future need to be better understood. They not only have major impacts on the ecology of grassy ecosystems but also on Earth -atmosphere linkages and the global carbon cycle in ways that are still being discovered.

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“…glaucum, and S. collina, can be used as important indicators for monitoring Inner Mongolian grasslands Changes in a range of environmental factors, including grazing, temperature, road construction and precipitation, at both large scale and small scales, can affect changes in the biomass of C 4 plants (Jolly and Haxeltine 1997;Pushkina et al 2010;Sinninghe Damsté et al 2011;Collins and Calabrese 2012;Scheiter et al 2012;Way 2012). In our study, the CV of C 4 species was higher than that of C 3 species (Fig.…”

Section: Both Temperature and Grazing Can Promote The Abundance Of C mentioning

confidence: 76%

Grazing primarily drives the relative abundance change of C4 plants in the typical steppe grasslands across households at a regional scale

Zhang

Ding

et al. 2014

Rangel. J.

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Abstract. Increases in temperature and grazing intensity are believed to promote the relative abundance of C 4 plants in grassland communities in Inner Mongolia. However, there is a lack of understanding as to which factor is the primary driver at the household scale. The relative abundance of C 4 plants in grassland communities within 32 households was monitored over a 5-year period in the typical steppe region of Inner Mongolia. The relationships between the mean annual temperature, grazing intensity and their combinations on the patterns of the relative abundance of C 4 plants across the land managed by these households were analysed. The results showed that (1) the herbage mass of the typical steppe grassland was mainly composed of C 3 plants (87%); (2) the C 4 plants were more sensitive to, and can be used as indicators of, environmental changes. These C 4 species included Cleistogenes squarrosa (Trin.) Keng, Chenopodium glaucum Linn. and Salsola collina Pall.; (3) both increasing temperature and grazing intensity promoted the relative abundance of C 4 plants. Grazing intensity was the primary driver of the change in relative abundance of C 4 plants in this region. Not only did grazing change the micro-environment of the grasslands, but also the C 3 species were preferentially grazed by the livestock. Comparison of the results with previous studies on the temporal variation in the abundance of C 4 plants suggests that the relative importance of grazing and climatic factors depends on the spatial scales of the studies, with climate being of greater importance at the regional rather than the household scale.

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A 25,000-year record of climate-induced changes in lowland vegetation of eastern equatorial Africa revealed by the stable carbon-isotopic composition of fossil plant leaf waxes

Cited by 137 publications

References 71 publications

Carbon isotope discrimination in C3 land plants is independent of natural variations in pCO2

Carbon isotope discrimination in C3 land plants is independent of natural variations in pCO2

Carbon dioxide and the uneasy interactions of trees and savannah grasses

Grazing primarily drives the relative abundance change of C4 plants in the typical steppe grasslands across households at a regional scale

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